Did Israel conduct a deliberate attack?

THURSDAY, APRIL 4, 2024

One meaning of "everything's possible:" Did Israel stage a deliberate attack on those humanitarian aid trucks, resulting the deaths of seven aid workers? 

Kevin Drum explores that question in a post which carries this headline:

Did Israel deliberately destroy an aid convoy?

We strongly recommend that you read Kevin's post. It creates a chance to ponder the way the world (sometimes) works.

Kevin starts by listing five bullet points which make it hard to believe that the attack was some sort of "fog of war" incident. His assessment comes next, as shown:

DRUM (4/3/24): So the only remaining question is: Why? Did the Israeli military deliberately destroy an aid convoy? Or, despite everything, did they somehow misidentify the trucks as Hamas?

I can hardly bring myself to believe it was deliberate. That would be monstrous. On the other hand, Israel's ongoing efforts to starve the Gazan population have been pretty monstrous. What's more, their recent acquiescence to increasing aid shipments has been very much against their will. Deliberately destroying an aid convoy would certainly be a very effective way of continuing their starvation policy by the simple expedient of scaring off humanitarian organizations. Finally, in addition to all this, it's just very hard to believe that an operation so precisely calculated and carried out was due merely to sloppy intel or a careless fog-of-war mistake.

I still don't believe it was deliberate. I can't. But it sure is getting harder.

We understand Kevin's reaction—and his reluctance. Beyond that, and for obvious reasons, we'll offer no final assessment of our own.

We have no reliable way to form an assessment. On the other hand, this:

Any decision which humans can make will eventually be made by someone. 

No matter how cruel, or even how evil, some such decision may seem, if the decision can be made, it has been made at some point in the past. And it will be made, once again, by someone in the future.

We understand Kevin's reluctance to say that Israel did this. On the other hand, he says in his post that Israel has already adopted a "starvation policy." How far away from that is this next possible step?

A few months ago, we introduced the concept of "disregarded peoples." Within the American journalistic context, Gazan citizens come close to being such a disappeared population—and the views and feelings of Israeli leadership cadres may have moved well beyond that.

We've often thought, in recent weeks, about the 1964 film, The Pawnbroker. The thumbnail runs as shown:

The Pawnbroker (film) 

The Pawnbroker is a 1964 American drama film directed by Sidney Lumet, starring Rod Steiger, Geraldine Fitzgerald, Brock Peters, Jaime Sánchez and Morgan Freeman in his feature film debut. The screenplay was an adaptation by Morton S. Fine and David Friedkin from the novel of the same name by Edward Lewis Wallant.

The film was the first produced entirely in the United States to deal with the Holocaust from the viewpoint of a survivor. It earned international acclaim for Steiger, launching his career as an A-list actor.

[...]

In 2008, The Pawnbroker was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."

Plot 

In Nazi Germany, Sol Nazerman, a German-Jewish university professor, is sent to a concentration camp along with his family. He witnesses his two children die and his wife raped by Nazi officers before she is killed.

Twenty-five years later, Nazerman is haunted by his memories. He operates a pawnshop in an East Harlem slum while living in an anonymous Long Island housing tract with his sister-in-law, who is also a Holocaust survivor, and her husband. Numbed and alienated by his experiences, he has trained himself not to show emotion...

The plot summary continues from there. Long story short, the Steiger character is a concentration camp survivor who has largely lost his soul in the process. Terrible things can happen to people who are subjected to so much vicious treatment.

With regard to the present-day situation, we've rarely seen a major topic which is so selectively reported and discussed within the mainstream American context. We refer to the coverage of actions by Israel itself, but also to the coverage of people here in the United States who are said to be (take your pick) "pro-Palestinian" or "pro-Hamas."

Some columnists have started describing and discussing the domestic pro-Palestinian / pro-Hamas situation, especially on college campuses. It seems to us that major news orgs are staying very far away from the general topic.

Tomorrow, we're expecting to suggest that Kevin hasn't been watching enough Red American cable news of late! We think he misstated the facts concerning a recent bit of Fox News journalism. (Our own blue tribe is rarely aware of what's being said and done over there.)

We think Kevin misstated the facts of that recent matter. We think he does a very good job laying out some basic facts concerning the deaths of those aid workers.

Everything is possible! If some type of decision can be made, at some point someone will. 


74 comments:

  1. "Any decision which humans can make will eventually be made by someone. "

    This is untrue because it implies that human behavior is random when it is not.

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    1. More like stochastic. Possibilities needn't be equally likely, but eventually all of them occur.

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    2. I doubt that.

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    3. I believe it. And with that in mind, imagining A.I. being harnessed by the wrong person or people (think Trump)...truly terrifying.

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  2. "Did Israel deliberately destroy an aid convoy?"

    Duh. What are you, dumb? They are Zionists. They've been practicing various degrees of genocide in Palestine since 1947.

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    1. This is why no one takes Palestinians seriously.

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    2. 1:10, you're a goddamn liar.

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  3. And the US continues to send weapons to Israel.

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    1. Has Hamas accepted a truce? I hadn't heard that it did.

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    2. Weapons were authorized before rump was in office, but they should still give that fascist monster Bibi a kick in the unfettered arms shipments.

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    3. Hamas and the Palestinians want unconditional surrender by Israel, nothing less. It is in their interest to kill aid workers.

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    4. Leave it to Bibi to do everything in his power to help Hamas and Palestinians, by killing aid workers. It shows some habits are hard to break.

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    5. And if Hamas and Palestinians have been posing as aid workers, who then is responsible?

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  4. "The film was the first produced entirely in the United States to deal with the Holocaust from the viewpoint of a survivor. "

    Actually, the film dealt with race relations between residents of a black neighborhood and an elderly Jewish holocaust survivor, decades after the war had ended. I would not say he has "lost his soul" as Somerby asserts, simply on the basis that he is numb emotionally.

    Somerby says: "Terrible things can happen to people who are subjected to so much vicious treatment." I would say that terrible things have already happened to such a person. Somerby's comment makes no sense, not even in the context of the film. Is this sentence odd because he is actually referring to pro-Palestinians who he mentions in the next paragraph? No one is starving on American campuses.

    I wish Somerby would not try to shoehorn dimly remembered films into his own preferred messages. Today, he says that Kevin Drum doesn't watch enough Fox News. I doubt that's true, especially when Somerby doesn't explain why he would think such a thing. If anyone is misstating facts, it is not Drum, but is much more likely to be folks on Fox.

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  5. Now Somerby is trying to convince his readers that the reporting on Israel that appears on Fox News is more reliable than mainstream news sources. I don't believe that.

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  6. Did Hamas conduct a deliberate attack on Israel on 10/7? Has Hamas been deliberately shielding its military efforts behind working hospitals in Gaza? Has Hamas shown any concern for the well-being of the residents of Gaza? Has Hamas shown any concern for the hostages it has been holding and still has not released?

    Why is all the concern supposed to flow from Israel to its attackers and none from Hamas toward the Palestinian people it supposedly represents?

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    1. @1:31 PM
      This woman answers your question:
      http://www.collectivelyfree.org/violence-of-the-oppressed/

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    2. The problem is identifying who is the oppressed and who the oppressor.

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    3. Not in this case.

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    4. Yes, in this case too. What happened on 10/7?

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    5. See 1:43 PM

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  7. Dimly remembered... smh

    Anyway, another classic this time by Lumet. Hopefully we do all the great directors and I'm very much liking the connection of great films to current news stories, this is preferable to quoting the Iliad for me.

    So the Pawnbroker, as well as being directed by one of the greats, also featured groundbreaking editing and a stellar cast.

    It's a tense portrait of post-war, post-traumatic anxieties, built from the characters out. Unlike many of today's movies where the characters are in service to the plot: when they're not engaged in funny quips they are doing exposition dumps (where the character basically reads the plot to you.)

    It is said The Pawnbroker was a precursor to the new Hollywood of the late '60s and early '70s.

    My favorite time period of films is the '70s myself, with my favorite film being The Conversation. Which we need more of around here, haha. Have a good day folks.

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    1. Of course it does. The core of the story revolves around the clandestine recording of a conversation that happens in the amazing continuous-shot opening scene between a couple in a park.

      What are you doing here?

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    2. You don’t hear it until the end of the film. The film is about paranoia.

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    3. Wrong again, you hear it repeatedly throughout the movie. Over and over again. Friendly request: can you not reply to me any more?

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    4. When the red, red robin,
      Goes bob, bob, bobbin' along, along

      Anyway, check it out sometime. I'm just confused by why you attempt to contradict people while not knowing what you are talking about.

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    5. Go watch the movie again. It is not about the conversation but about the paranoia that Gene Hackman develops about being spyed on, which causes him to tear his entire apartment apart by the end of the film.

      If you cannot stand a little disagreement, you don't belong on the internet.

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  8. Heather Cox Richardson today discussed the 2000 Gore v Bush election shenanigans that gave Bush the victory:

    "The election of 2000 was back in the news this week, when Nate Cohn of the New York Times reminded readers of his newsletter, using a map by data strategist and consultant Matthew C. Isbell, that the unusual butterfly ballot design in Palm Beach County that year siphoned off at least 2,000 votes intended for Democratic candidate Al Gore to far-right candidate Pat Buchanan.

    Those 2,000 votes were enough to decide the election, “all things being equal,” Cohn wrote. But of course, they weren’t equal: in 1998 a purge of the Florida voter rolls had disproportionately disenfranchised Black voters, making them ten times more likely than white voters to have their ballots rejected.

    That ballot and that purge gave Republican candidate George W. Bush the electoral votes from Florida, putting him into the White House although he had lost the popular vote by more than half a million votes.

    Revisiting the 2000 election reminds us that manipulating the vote through voter suppression or the mechanics of an election in even small ways can undermine the will of the people.

    A poll out today from the Associated Press/NORC showed that the vast majority of Americans agree about the importance of the fundamental principles of our democracy. Ninety-eight percent of Americans think the right to vote is extremely important, very important, or somewhat important. Only 2% think it is “not too important.” The split was similar with regard to “the right of everyone to equal protection under the law”: 98% of those polled thought it was extremely, very, or somewhat important, while only 2% thought it was not too important. "

    You'd think this would be on Somerby's radar.

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    1. It's staggering to think how such "small" things so drastically altered the course of history. Not just what happened during Bush's first term, but for all time.

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  9. It’s preposterous to imagine that the killing might be intentional. Israel has gone to enormous lengths to protect Palestinian civilians. Israel gains nothing by killing these aid workers. Accidents happen in war. E.g. Hamas bombed a Palestinian hospital.

    It’s so preposterous that even speculating about the possibility is antisemitism. It’s time for Jews to reconsider our allegiance to the Democratic Party.

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    1. What allegiance — you are a Republican.

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    2. Come on now David.The Democratic President just approved shipping thousands of big ass bombs to the fascist criminal Netanyahu. Kevin Drum is an old school lefty blogger; and like Somerby has no impact on Democratic policies.

      If I say Trump is a 3x's adjudged fraudster, an adjudged rapist & sexual abuser, and attempted an autogolpe (hopefully soon to be adjudged) intending to destroy American democracy; does that make me an America hater? Or does it mean I expect better from my countries leadership. Bibi is Trump. A sick piece of work the the State of Israel needs to dump. Does not mean I hate Jews?

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    3. DiC - Who's being naive, Kay?

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    4. "It’s time for Jews to reconsider our allegiance to the Democratic Party."

      I see. Your analysis of the humanitarian situation in Gaza leads you to a conclusion about domestic politics.

      Party first, eh?

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    5. Biden has been funding relief too.

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    6. David, it stops discourse in its tracks when you instantly cry “antisemitism.” Is Kevin Drum antisemitic? Is Somerby, since he leans towards Drum’s view?

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    7. @3:32 I gave 3 or 4 reasons to believe that the attack was an accident. What are your reasons for thinking that the attack might have been intentional? If you can't provide reasons, I will suspect that your reason is that Israeli Jews are evil.

      BTW I don't recall you or Kevin or Bob ever expressing a suspicion that Hamas's bombing of a Gaza Hospital was intentional? Does that mean you think Israeli Jews are more evil than Hamas?

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    8. David, I would find it more interesting if you could explain the reasons why you think speculating the killing might be possibly intentional is antisemitic.

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    9. Some reasons why people may speculate that it is a possibility would be that the man in charge of the organization specifically made that accusation, and that apparently Israel has a "starvation policy" and the workers were delivering food, and it's hard to understand why all of the workers were killed when they knew it was an aid convoy.

      I'm surprised not to see pushback over the accusation that Israel has a starvation policy. Do you agree with that?

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    10. "BTW I don't recall you or Kevin or Bob ever expressing a suspicion that Hamas's bombing of a Gaza Hospital was intentional? Does that mean you think Israeli Jews are more evil than Hamas?"

      Is this question logical? Can you explain further what you mean?

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    11. David 3:44 - not the person you asked for an answer. From what I read, World Kitchen coordinated their movement with IDF before moving. Their vehicles were marked World Kitchen. IDF blew up a vehicle. WK folks scurried. IDF launched a second bomb at a second vehicle. WK scrambled. IDF sent a third bomb at the third vehicle killing all. Clearly an accident. Fog of war. Hip. Hip.

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    12. "Israel has gone to enormous lengths to protect Palestinian civilians." 20,00 adults and 10,00 innocent babies disagree. Hate to see if they were being nasty.

      "Israel gains nothing by killing these aid workers."
      What if their goal is to scare off aid workers and cause greater harm to the civilian population?

      "Accidents happen in war." E.g. Netanyahu and IDF were completely unprepared for the attack. Stange "accident" that. Reminds one of the Project for a New American Century doesn't it?

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    13. Recall that Israel killed some hostages who had escaped from Hamas. In war tragic accidents are unfortunately all too common.

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    14. Apparently Palestinian trolls don't know how we use commas in numbers in the US.

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    15. You are so superior to them.

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    16. Is it possible that Hamas has been moving supplies and people around in vehicles marked as aid? That would be consistent with their use of hospitals for military activities.

      People are jumping to the obvious conclusion that Israel deliberately killed aid workers, but why would Israel bring that down on themselves? It makes more sense that this situation was created by Hamas using aid operations as a cover for their own war-making.

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  10. It's quite shocking to see Drum mention Israel's "starvation policy" so casually and matter-of-factly.

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    1. Six months of forced migration and closed borders. Where would you think the population of Gaza is going to get food?

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    2. I have no idea. It's just shocking to see a starvation policy mentioned in passing as if it is accepted and acknowledged that there is one.

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  11. We assume that it is Israel blocking a ceasefire but I think it is mostly Hamas preventing peace. That means urging Biden to pressure Netanyahu will do no good.

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    1. Yes, the status quo is just peachy keen. Why try to improve conditions in Eden?

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    2. No one said that, but what is the point of applying pressure to Israel when they cannot get Hamas to agree to anything positive?

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  12. Trump is still goofing around:

    https://www.cbsnews.com/news/donald-trump-175-million-civil-fraud-bond-valid-new-york/

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    1. What's the name of the CEO of the surety company, John Barron or David Dennison?

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    2. This article doesn't make a statement. It asks whether something is possible. It justifies the question by quoting anonymous "experts". My advice is to ignore this type of article

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  13. That they murdered some aid workers, that's just a Wednesday in Palestine. But what about them bombing the Iranian embassy in Damascus, killing seven people? That seems like a much more serious shit. A major escalation.

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  14. "President Biden warned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in an unusually stark phone call today that continued U.S. support for Israel on Gaza will be conditioned on Israel swiftly announcing and implementing changes to humanitarian restrictions that have put Gaza on the brink of famine and its conduct of the war that has led to the killing of over 200 aid workers and thousands of Palestinians civilians.

    “If we don’t see changes on their side, there will have to be changes on our side,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby summarized the President’s message in the call."

    Laura Rozen from Diplomatic at Substack

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  15. https://yastreblyansky.substack.com/p/the-chatbot-did-it?r=ip7r&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&triedRedirect=true

    Here is an exploration of what happened and why that food convoy was attacked. It is a lot closer to my proposed explanation (that Hamas was using the convoy for cover) than it is to those proposing that Israel hates Palestinians so much that it has a starvation strategy and this was part of their devious plot to keep food away from starving people.

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    1. I should add: I have no idea if it's accurate. News orgs need to cover it if it's verifiable.

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    2. From the comments:

      I keep coming back to a point that article from +972 planted in my head when you first linked to it, which is that the Israeli leaders intend to kill every Hamas member, of which there are about 30,000.
      But by now, they’ve killed some 32,000 people total, most of them not Hamas. So if it’s measured by the objective of killing everyone in Hamas, the operation is a failure. I mean, it’s not even close to succeeding....
      I can’t understand how anybody could make excuses for this anymore.

      author
      Yastreblyansky
      Apr 3
      Author
      Yes, and then they're recruiting new Hamas members every day, burning with a desire for revenge.

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    3. https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/03/middleeast/israel-gaza-artificial-intelligence-bombing-intl/index.html

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    4. Mike --

      1. Israel has done a remarkable job of holding down civilian deaths. See: "Report Reveals Israel Has Historically Low Civilian Death Ratio In War On Hamas" https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/report-reveals-israel-has-historically-low-civilian-death-ratio-in-war-on-hamas/ar-AA1ldMVa
      2. Any statistics that come from Hamas, are not reliable.
      3. I don't think that revenge is a key recruiting tool for Hamas. Israel left Gaza alone for 20 years. Israel also forced any Jews in Gaza to leave. Hamas responded with rapes, torture, child murders and kidnapping.
      4. I agree that Hamas is recruiting. Or, some other group of Palestinians will recruit to attack Israel. Most of the Palestinians in Gaza hate Israel hate Jews, and want to destroy the Jewish State. This hatred is the fundamental problem. IMO killing every single Hamas member will not guarantee long term peace, because the hatred is still there.

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    5. "The Science Is Clear. Over 30,000 People Have Died in Gaza"... "In the case of Gaza, acknowledging that there was an appalling and extremely deadly attack on October 7th, and that over 30,000 Gazans have died since, mostly women and children, seems like the most basic of cornerstones of reality on which to move toward constructive discussion and eventual resolution." https://time.com/6909636/gaza-death-toll/

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    6. Science is never clear. Only faith is clear.

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    7. Lol. Ironically stated without qualification. Kind of like a statement of faith.

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  16. @5:04 wrote, "If we don’t see changes on their side, there will have to be changes on our side,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby summarized the President’s message

    The Biden Administration sees the US and Israel as being on two opposing side. Huh? Israel is our staunchest ally in the Middle East.

    Who in the Middle East does oppose the US? Iran is on the other side. Hamas and Hezbollah are on the other side.

    President Trump at least knew enough to support our allies and oppose our enemies.

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    1. That's not what he meant. It's similar to saying, if they don't change things on their end, we'll have to on ours.

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    2. Mike, I wish I could agree with you, but here's another statement from John Kirby
      On Thursday’s broadcast of CNN’s “Situation Room,” White House National Security Communications Adviser John Kirby stated that while you can’t equate Israel’s actions to Hamas launching the October 7 attack, “it’s difficult to say” how close Israel is to becoming indistinguishable from Hamas. Host Wolf Blitzer asked, “You heard Secretary Blinken earlier today, suggest — he warned that there’s a real risk the way Israel is waging its war in Gaza right now is making it indistinguishable from Hamas.

      This is no way to talk about one's closest ally in the middle east.

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    3. Biden doesn't see Israel as an ally, but as an enemy - one he intends to destroy.

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    4. Biden keeps giving Israel weapons.

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    5. This comment has been removed by the author.

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    6. This is why people on the right get misled. They get their info from sources that cherry pick what was said, and provide no context, in order to lead their audience to a certain interpretation. It's similar to what some liberal sources did with Trump's "bloodbath" comment. The first bit of context would be the long unbroken history of U.S. support for Israel, under both Democratic and Republican administrations. The second would be that Biden from day one has made it abundantly clear that he is on Israel's side -- both verbally and in terms of supplying military aid. He even said he was a Zionist for god's sake. The third bit of context is the tens of thousands of civilian deaths in Gaza, the 200 aid workers' deaths, and 95 journalist deaths. The fourth bit of context is the events of the day: the baffling targeting of three aid worker vehicles resulting in the deaths of all aid 7 aid workers in those vehicles.

      With all of that context in mind, here is the statement from Blinken that Blitzer was referring to:  "As has been said, whoever saves a life, saves the entire world. That's our strength. It's what distinguishes us from terrorists like Hamas. If we lose that reverence for human life, we risk becoming indistinguishable from those we confront." This is a truism. It's complete, noncontroversial boilerplate. And now, with that in mind, here is the exchange between Blitzer and Kirby:
      BLITZER: You heard Secretary Blinken earlier today suggest -- he warned that there's a real risk. The way Israel is waging its war in Gaza right now is making it indistinguishable from Hamas. How close is Israel to that point?

      KIRBY: Well, it's difficult to say on a scale like that. I mean, we have to remember, Hamas -- there was a ceasefire in place on the 6th of October. Hamas broke it. Mr. Sinwar chose to start this war. Mr. Sinwar and Hamas fighters choose to bury themselves under hospitals and civilian infrastructure, use the innocent people of Gaza as human shields.
      They are increasingly placing innocent Palestinians at greater risk as well. I think we can't equate what they did on the 7th of October to the kinds of operations that Israel is conducting [!!!!!!!!!!!].
      That said, and we've been clear about this too, it's not just the right and responsibility of the IDF to go after Hamas. It's the way they do it that matters. And it is the way that they have been doing it in recent weeks and months that have caused increasing frustration by us in terms of civilian casualties, the damage to civilian infrastructure and now the potential impact on humanitarian organizations being fearful of moving into Gaza.

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  17. Here’s a news report on Israel’s investigation;

    https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-68742572.amp

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